


shoot-the-duck

by nisakomi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Skating, Fluff and Crack, Jargon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-30
Updated: 2016-11-30
Packaged: 2018-09-03 07:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8702095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nisakomi/pseuds/nisakomi
Summary: This ain't Blades of Glory, folks. But eh, it's close enough.





	

You could blindfold Jeon Wonwoo and lead him through a maze but he’d know as soon as you brought him into a skating rink. 

It’s just a thing he can tell, as soon as he walks through the doors. The air hits his face and he takes a deep breath in.

It’s the smell. Wonwoo would come up with flowery metaphors for it, but when the ice rink is home, no matter which ice rink or where in the world, this is his reference point. Other things smell like ice, not the other way around. 

He’s still sucking in weirdly ventilated air when he walks into Junhui’s suddenly halted back. They’re not exactly late for the ladies’ short program, but Wonwoo had asked fifteen minutes ago if Junhui needed to pee and he’d said no, goddamnit. One of these days, he’s going to be late for his starting time because of an emergency bathroom break, Wonwoo just knows it, and he’ll laugh at the disastrous situation without any remorse. 

He takes half a step backward, ready to yell at Junhui, but then Junhui whirls around faster than he twists in revolutions for his quad toe and makes panicked blinking eye sirens at him. 

Wonwoo’s gaze darts from side to side, trying to cogitate whatever was the matter. 

“Nnnnnnn!” Junhui explains, shaking Wonwoo by the shoulders. “NnnnNNNNnn!!!” 

“I’m— Oh.” A short ways behind Junhui, standing with his back to the wall, is a familiar face. 

“Yeah!!!!!!!!” Junhui says, eyes huge and wide and staring intently into Wonwoo’s own. He switches to mouthing out the syllables for “E-RIC RAD-FORD,” opening his mouth so wide Wonwoo can see the little dangly thing at the back of his throat and moving his lips with excessive articulation. 

“Okay…and…?” The last time they’d met Eric Radford, Junhui had not nearly been this startled by the man’s existence. 

“He’s right! There! Don’t you see him?” 

“Yes, I see that the nerves are getting to you. Let’s get going.” Wonwoo grabs Junhui’s wrist and tugs him along, but doesn’t get more than half a metre sideways before Junhui’s somehow twisted his arm around to cling on to Wonwoo’s in order to pull him back. 

Junhui makes a wild gesturing noise, which Wonwoo is a little surprised he’s capable of executing consider how much the idiot is vibrating. Makes him look like one of those wiggling inflatable tube people outside car dealerships. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Wonwoo demands. “You don’t even like Duhamel/Radford, you think Sui/Han should have won gold at worlds, and you run away from Meagan whenever you see her because she scares you.” 

Junhui waves his arms and nearly takes out some passerby’s eye, who begins furiously whispering to her companion in rapid fire Japanese. “Okay but! He’s famous!” 

Wonwoo rolls his eyes. Junhui was famous once too, technically, back when he took the junior circuit by storm. Lots of people get whispered about in juniors, but half of them hit their ceiling early and crash out, half of them don’t work as hard because things come too easily to them, and every once in a while you get someone who ends up Olympic champion. Or you get someone like Junhui, who misses an entire season and a half because of a back injury and has to overhaul his entire jumping technique to not end up with a broken spine by age 20. It’s hard to predict how it goes. 

Besides, fame is relative. You get the people who follow the sport closely like that Japanese woman who probably knew who they were, the casual fans who wouldn’t know them but would know E-RIC RAD-FORD, two time pairs figure skating world champion, and then you have the larger population of the world who don’t follow figure skating whatsoever and wouldn’t recognize any of them. 

“Okay, he’s famous. You gonna get an autograph with him? A photo?” 

Junhui nods his head rapidly and then shakes it even faster. “I can’t now,” he whines, jutting out his lower jaw so his bottom teeth are sticking out. Wonwoo wishes he’d stop making that face. “He’s probably seen me freak out over him and thinks I’m a weirdo. It’d be too awkward to ask now. Wait, wait, can you ask him for one? Please please please please Wonwoo Wonwoo Wonwoo Nuuuu Nuuuuuu Nuuuuuuuuuuuu.”

“Don’t call me that.” Wonwoo slides his fingers from Junhui’s forehead down to his chin, erasing that ugly, annoyingly endearing expression. “ _I_ don’t want an autograph from him, why would I ask him for something like that?”

Junhui alternates between cooing at the signature during the waits for the judges’ scores and draping both arms around Wonwoo’s neck during the skates to cut off his air supply whenever any of the landings get tight. He cheers louder for little Dabinnie and Nahyunnie than the rest of the arena combined (Wonwoo’s not helping them on that front, clapping politely but keeping his mouth shut, staying seated because it’s too much effort to stand or shout), and skates his way into fourth at the end of the short. 

In some ways being back in seventh makes Wonwoo feel like he’s physically looking up. 

And it wasn’t nerves after all, it was just – and if Eric Radford had surmised this then good for him – Junhui really was a weirdo. Albeit a cute one. 

Also, technically Junhui does get a photo with Radford when all the skaters take a selca together at the end of the event, but the dumbass didn’t even realize it because he was too busy making a weird face for the camera. Wonwoo hasn’t even seen the resulting photo but he already knows it was a cheeks-blown-up face, possibly because he was too busy staring sideways at Junhui to realize the shutter was going off to look into the lens. 

 

 

 

Junhui really does walk away with fourth overall which is brilliant and Wonwoo pulls himself up to sixth which is decent considering Skate Canada is the only grand prix event either of them were assigned to. 

There’s bigger names in the draw for both China and Korea, but coach manages a small smile for each of them back in Detroit. Her top level skaters are performing at level, and her lower tier skaters aren’t underperforming, so there’s a cushy bonus waiting for her at the end of the season, in all likelihood, on top of her regular exorbitant fees. The day only goes downhill after that smile, though. 

There’s still a lot of the season left to go, exciting stuff, although the next time either of them compete probably won’t be until nationals – ugh, just thinking about the training camps in advance and then after make Wonwoo’s ankles quake. That doesn’t mean they get light schedules though, in fact, they probably have less rest time than the skaters flying back and forth for the rest of the grand prix or challenger series events. 

Wonwoo’s triple sal is getting wonky, and he knows it’s from training the quad, but if he admits that they’ll force him to stop practicing the 4S and so he keeps his head down through being yelled at for not focusing, avoiding eye contact with Junhui who skates circles around the ice staring at him in concern. 

And to top it off fitness coaches push them through several rounds of stroke and bladework drills for “cool down” at the end of the day that leave Wonwoo sweatier and more exhausted than all the jump passes he’d attempted in the morning. 

He all but collapses onto Junhui’s shoulder when they gather for last words of the day, hovering at the back of the pack of skaters listening to the loud yelling from coach, her Russian accent thick and heavy around the English syllables. 

As expected, Junhui quickly loops his arms around Wonwoo’s waist to steady him. 

Unexpectedly, Junhui then bends down and hooks an arm under Wonwoo’s knees, lifting him up. 

Wonwoo’s arms flail and he reaches for Junhui’s neck, steadying himself. Junhui’s ugly, loud, snorting laughter while he turns them around in a shaky upright spin unfortunately catches the attention of the people they’re standing around and, more unfortunately, coach. 

“Can’t succeed in singles so you two are going into pairs now, no?” Coach says sharply. 

Junhui nearly drops Wonwoo on his ass and there’s a bit of a kerfuffle as they straighten themselves out and look appropriately apologetic.

“Should do it.” Hansol whispers, shuffling over to their side of the herd. “You’d make a cute pairs couple. I mean, you can clearly do the lifts. And you’ve got the jumps down. If you start doing throws and death spirals, you’re already in sync enough that the side-by-side spins won’t be hard,” 

“Aren’t you worried we’d be adding to the pairs circuit competition against you and Sof?” Junhui asks. He speaks tauntingly, almost like a leer with the way he’s up in Hansol’s face. It makes _Wonwoo_ uncomfortable, he can’t imagine how Hansol must feel having his private space so invaded.

Okay, so that discomfort is actually a snake nest of envy, whatever, semantics. 

Hansol laughs. “Mm, I’d feel threatened if the ISU didn’t specify ‘one lady and one man’.”

“We should petition,” Junhui announces. It’s a little too loud to be a whisper but coach is done with them for the day and ignores it. “Seriously, this is our one chance to beat Eric Radford.”

Wonwoo’s nose goes scrunchy and the lines around his mouth crease. “What is with your obsession with Eric Radford lately?”

Junhui shrugs. “He’s tall.” 

Wonwoo’s scrunching intensifies. “He’s like _maaaayybe_ five centimetres taller than me. Max.”

“Ooooh, someone’s got a crush,” Hansol says.

It takes some concerted effort, but Wonwoo manages to beat back the threat to rip Hansol Vernon Chwe’s tongue out of his mouth. Junhui didn’t have a crush. Wonwoo scoffs. Although, it would explain all of that weird shyness that went on in Canada…

“Hansol!” Junhui says, feigning offense. “Don’t go sharing my secrets like that.” 

At this point, the muscles in Wonwoo’s face are so contorted together he resembles a wrinkly walnut. “He has a boyfriend.”

“Whatever.” Junhui pretends to toss his hair. “He’s not good enough to be my boyfriend anyway. I want someone who can actually land a quad. Tall. Someone reliable you know, that you could trust wouldn't drop you in a lift if you were in pairs skating.”

“That still leaves, like, half of the men’s field,” Hansol points out. 

Wonwoo grins. “But not Eric Radford.” 

 

 

 

Hansol’s head pops up from the seat in front. “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” 

Yes, it is, Hansol Vernon Chwe, Wonwoo does not say. He’s got Junhui’s head resting on his shoulder but his arm stuck underneath the arm rest and he can barely breathe in case the movement in his chest wakes Junhui up. 

The flight to Colorado for winter training is over four hours long, and Wonwoo has been painfully watching the seconds tick down as he lost all feeling in his arm. It was, quite frankly, probably going to have to be amputated. 

“Shh,” Wonwoo settles for instead, gritting his teeth and forcing air between them so his chest doesn’t have to expand. “You’ll wake him up,” he whispers, barely audible over the sound of the airplane engine. 

He busies himself with looking down and right out of the corner of his eyes to confirm that Junhui hasn’t been jostled, missing the elegant eyebrow raise Hansol shoots him. 

“Wow,” Hansol says, marginally quieter than the first time he spoke. “Um. Wow.” 

“What?” Wonwoo asks, accidentally tilting his chin out. Junhui’s eyes remain closed, thankfully. 

“When are you going to tell him?”

Wonwoo glares. He internally debates whether or not he should ask the ‘tell him what’ question, but he knows what Hansol’s getting at and if goes into the argument, it’s just prolonging the amount of time Hansol yammers, thereby increasing the probability that Junhui wakes up. But if he acknowledges it then Hansol wins and Wonwoo loses any plausible deniability and ugh.

It feels an awful lot like being between a rock and a hard place. 

Honestly, this whole plane ride is going miserably. All Wonwoo wanted to do was reread Fantastic Beasts before the movie came out, but the book is just out of reach and he can’t lean down to grab it without nudging Junhui out of place for sure and why does Hansol Vernon Chwe care anyway it’s not his business. 

For the record, Junhui is the hard place. A hard place could be anything, but Junhui is not an ugly grey lump so that’s automatically relegated to Hansol.

“Maybe after one of us medals at a senior event. For motivation, you know.” Wonwoo imagines Hansol’s skin going grey and speckled. 

“Wow, for motivation? Is being on the podium not motivating enough?”

The thing is, the history books have loads of people on podiums. Tons of people can be Skate America champion, or World Champion, heck, even Olympic champions exist by the dozens. The number of people who could be Junhui’s boyfriend? That number was much much smaller. And besides, you could have as many gold medals as you wanted, but that wouldn’t mean you had Wen Junhui’s heart. 

Wonwoo sulks. “You asked and I answered, go away.” 

“I guess one of us really needs to place at four continents,” mumbles Junhui.

Wonwoo’s hand flies to his chest. “You’re awake,” he accuses. 

“Yeah, I’m going away,” Hansol says, to no one’s attention, sliding back down in his seat. 

“What are you going to tell me?” 

A pause. 

“He likes you!” Hansol hollers from the front. 

Wonwoo kicks the back of Hansol's seat. Hard. Twice. 

“Can you land a quad?” Junhui asks. He snuggles into the space between Wonwoo’s neck and shoulder, and Wonwoo sneakily moves his arms, hiding the pins and needles shooting up his spine from the sudden return of blood circulation. 

“Two types,” Wonwoo affirms. “And I'm tall and you're the one doing the lifting.”

“Boyfriend material," Junhui confirms. "Kiss me,” he instructs. 

Wonwoo’s heart does a triple flutz so messy it would make Nahyunnie’s edges look clean. 

And then he does as he’s asked. Listening to your partner is important in any pairs team.

**Author's Note:**

> after the mess that was exorbitantly, i swore i'd never write figure skating au again, but here we are. 
> 
> there were no fewer than 50 things i SHOULD have been writing instead of this, and then another 50 things i could have been doing, but here we are. 
> 
> if this fic disappointed you as much as it disappointed me, [here](https://twitter.com/xxwonhuixx/status/801634306716147713)'s the link to xxwonhuixx's wonhui figure skating drawing as 해풀's art will always be infinitely better than anything i write. my excuse this time is that it was written between 3:30-5am so. 
> 
> oh! and if you wanna leave me some anonymous love, [here](http://gdgdbaby.livejournal.com/146410.html?thread=7615466#t7615466)'s my holiday love meme thread.


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